


Warpath 2

by ranya_ni



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Chantry critical, Cullen critical, F/F, F/M, M/M, Sad with a Happy Ending, Templar critical, events of dragon age 2, fuck elthina in particular, male and female hawke are twins, no twin death, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 07:25:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16321766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ranya_ni/pseuds/ranya_ni
Summary: If Varric Tethras had been asked how to write a novel he would have said start somewhere dramatic with a character the audience can relate to. He might have even gone on to say make sure you grab your audience and by writing what you know. If he thought you were any good he'd tell you to make sure to know when to stop the story.If Varric was your friend, however, he would tell you to forget the whole thing. He would tell you writing will only break your heart and writing what you know means you always write a tragedy.





	Warpath 2

**Author's Note:**

> My attempt at writing a longer story.
> 
> No beta we die like men.

If Varric Tethras had been asked how to write a novel he would have said start somewhere dramatic with a character the audience can relate to. He might have even gone on to say make sure you grab your audience and by writing what you know. If he thought you were any good he'd tell you to make sure to know when to stop the story.

If Varric was your friend, however, he would tell you to forget the whole thing. He would tell you writing will only break your heart and writing what you know means you always write a tragedy. 

What Varric would not have ever done was write about real life the way it really happened. No one wanted to read about the way his ankle throbbed as he was dragged by his arms into the Chantry jailhouse or the taste of iron and vomit in his mouth after being punched by the Seeker guard. They didn't want to read about the fact that he was not the first person in this room by a long shot and that the blood on the floor from its previous guest was still drying. 

No, people wanted to read about heroic deeds. They wanted to forget about how fucked up the real world was for a little while by reading about heroes narrowly escaping danger and saving the day.

Writing about corrupt politicians or murder was easy. Writing about the Kirkwall summer heat in a small stone room was not. He thought he might faint before they even questioned him. Being thrown in a chair was a small relief but being chained to it by the ankles only cemented that he was there at someone else's beck and call.

Most of all, he wouldn't recommend writing about real life and the real things that happened because that would mean writing about the waiting.

In novels or plays things happened all at once. The viewer could connect all the points along the way and see the grand scheme of things as they happened. In real life, sometimes things didn't make sense, or happened out of order, or the person who could help you died a week earlier. Things took time, so much time, that you lost perspective on how you moved from point A to point B. 

Varric was a writer, and was better at connecting points than most. He could see the many ways a thing could turn out before it happened, but he wasn't perfect. He had known there would be fallout. He had known Olrais would not allow sleeping dogs to lie but he hadn't guessed the specific events that would lead to him being chained to a chair in an overheated room to talk to an official. He didn't know if he was going to survive this encounter and he didn't know if it would make a difference.

There were small vents in the room high up on the walls to allow in air and the summer heat but they were too small to climb through. He leaned into the high backed chair and watched the sun move across the sky. 

If he'd been writing this, the official that was going to question him would have shown up immediately and demanded questions. They would torture him enough that he looked ruggedly disheveled before releasing him in disgust. He'd snigger, whistle a tune, and saunter back to his usual room in the Hanged Man Inn. Then he'd write a deeply moving paragraph on the evils of corruption that would fill the common man with warmth.

Ugh, wrong choice of words. 

He was sweating now and trickles of it were running rivets down the backs of his knees and into his boots. 

The sun continued to march from one window to the next.

Time passed.

Varric idly wondered if this was a tactic they normally employed or if his Chantry torturer was just chronically late. Perhaps they'd missed their boat from Olrais. Or had gotten lost. Or fallen down the stairs from the Viscount's Keep all the way to Lowtown and died. Maybe they were nervous. Maybe they just didn't like dwarves. 

Maybe they were forcing him to live a little too much in his head.

The sun disappeared from his little windows and slowly the room began to grow darker.

More time passed.

Shit.

We're they just going to leave him there?

The air was becoming humid as it began to cool. It was near dusk before anything at all happened.

The door opened.

If Varric were to narrate the story later on he'd have said "it burst open" or "was thrown open". If he had a good audience he might have said "the old rusted hinges screamed in protest as the battered door was kicked open by a shadowy figure".

But that's now how real life worked.

The door opened. With force certainly, but that was because the wood door in the wood frame had swelled in the summer heat and was difficult to open. It opened with loud protest and gave suddenly which caused it to hit back against the stone wall. It bounced and nearly hit the person in the doorway but stopped just shy.

The person in the doorway was a woman with a stocky, muscular frame. She held a familiar book in one hand and flipped through the pages with the other. Flickering torchlight made her dark features difficult to pick out but even in the low light Varric could see she was wearing armor decorated with an open eye and sunburst on the breastplate.

A Seeker then.

"I am Cassandra Pentaghast, Seeker of the Chantry," she said as she stepped into the room.

Pentaghast. Interesting. That told Varric a few things. She was Nivaran, she was nobility, and unless she thought him a complete shut in, she was the Right Hand of the Divine. Saying she was 'of the Chantry' was like saying Varric was simply 'a dwarf'.

"And just what are you seeking," Varric asked as two of her guards filed into the room to either side of her. 

The door was left open. To taunt him with the prospect of leaving or to simply let in fresh air, who knew. Maybe it was a little of both.

"The Champion," she replied. Her tone was official, bored even. 

Time to see how far he could push her.

"Which one?"

"You know exactly why I'm here," she said in the same bored tone and placed the book in his lap, open-faced to the intro.

If this was a novel, she would have roughed him up so the hero would gain sympathy from the audience. Maybe she would have shook him or slapped him. 

But real life is not as explosive.

Heh. He'd made a joke.

"Time to start talking dwarf," Seeker Cassandra said with a raised eyebrow, "they tell me you're good at it."

In a display that was worthy of one of Varric's books, she pulled out her belt knife and while looking him dead in the eye, sunk her blade down into the thick of his book until the blade emerged between his knees.

Holy shit.

Varric picked up the book with one hand gently and looked underneath. It had indeed gone clean through all of the papyrus and the thin wooden cover. And that was just her belt knife?!

"What do you want to know?" Varric asked.

"Everything. Start from the beginning."

Varric looked back down at the book in his lap. Her blade had gone through the Amell family crest. It was a little off center, but if he was retelling the story he'd say something like "her blade cut right to the heart of the book, just like her questions."

"Right. Let's begin."

\-----

The smoke from the battlefield burned the eyes of any who dared walk it, and few dared. Broken limbed trees jutted up like the teeth of some great beast, ready to devour any who would venture too close. If there was a place furthest from the Maker's bosom, this place was it.

The drooling maws of darkspawn inched ever closer to our heroes, their blades flashing. What made these creatures terrifying wasn't their weapons or rotting flesh, it was their blood. Blood that could burn fields and kill the healthy. Blood that could poison all that touched it. Blood.

Darkspawn were fearsome, but no matter. They could not match the heroic might of Garrett Hawke whose dark rippling muscles glinted in the afternoon sun. 

With the simple spin of his staff, Garrett threw a massive bolt of purple electricity hurling towards his unsuspecting foes and knocking them over like paper toys.

Garrett stood boldly in the sun, a true hero, wiping the perfect amount of glistening sweat from his brow as his younger brother, a Grey Warden, stared at him in starry-eyed wonder. For even the Grey Wardens bowed before the superior might that was Garrett Hawke. He was like no other.

"Scouts," his younger brother said, looking worried.

"We'll make our stand here," Garrett said in a rough baritone that made the loins stir, "prepare yourself."

Just as he finished saying this the darkspawn came at them from both sides. They screamed their horrible war cries at the pair but Garrett never even flinched. 

The ensuing battle was hard, with Garrett picking up the slack as his brother began to tire.

"They just keep coming," his brother panted in weariness and fear, "we can't keep this up forever."

"Neither can they." Garrett's staff spun, cracking down on the earth and sending up a blaze of lightning.

"I'm with you, brother," the younger one said in awe at Garrett's resolve. 

Garrett flexed his massive muscles and prepared for the next assault. 

It was bloody. For the other side at least. Garrett fought valiantly as the hoard thickened. Just when all hope seemed lost a shadow crossed the earth.

There, high above in crimson glory, was the largest high dragon known to man. As it unfurled it's massive leather wings to blot out the sun and gave an earth shattering roar to make the knees tremble, Garrett knew-

\-----

"Bullshit," Seeker Cassandra interrupted with a frown, "That's not what really happened."

She sounded irritated, not amused. Interesting.

"Does that not match the story you've heard?" Varric asked politely. 

"I'm not interested in stories," she said as she circled him slowly, "I came here to learn the truth."

The truth?

People never wanted the truth. The truth was raw, the truth was unkind, and often the truth smelled like piss. The Chantry didn't want the truth. It wanted a convenient scapegoat to pin things on. It wanted to lash out at those it deemed wrong.

Yet here, calmly staring Varric down, was a woman who demanded the truth. 

And what if he told her the truth? 

A version she wanted to hear, anyway.

"What makes you think I know the truth," he asked.

Seeker Cassandra's frown deepened. She wasn't interested in witty back and forth it seemed. Shame.

"Don't lie to me," she said.

If this where a play, this is the part where the actor would pretend to slap him dramatically across the cheek. His head would snap to the side and they'd both stand there for a moment while they mentally pictured the script where it said 'beat'. They'd then move on with the scene, painting Varric as the lovable rogue, here against his will in the clutches of the tyrannical Seeker.

What really happened was she raised her voice, leaned in and said:

"You knew him before he even became the Champion."

"Even if I did, I don't know where he is now," Varric said.

That was a Big Fat Lie.

Varric knew exactly where Garrett Hawke was. Based on the time of day, he could even guess what he was doing right now. The lie was an important one though, for it achieved a few things:

One, it determined if he could lie in front of her. Varric was a pretty damn good liar, but Seeker's were said to have powers no normal person possessed. He had no idea if she could sense a lie.

Two, it kept Hawke safe. Varric may have occasionally done things that were less than savory. Cheat at cards, turn down bed company from beautiful people, lie. One thing he didn't do was sell out his friends.

That friend especially. 

Ever.

The Seeker leaned back and stood with her back to him. Her hands clenched and unclenched. She seemed to have bought his lie.

"Do you have any idea what is at stake here?" She asked.

He did.

"Let me guess," he said, somewhat coldly,"your precious Chantry has fallen to pieces and now the entire world is on the brink of war?"

She turned back to him, face open, desperate.

He sighed.

"And you need the one person who can help you put it back together," he added.

"The Champion was at the heart of it when it all began," she said. She didn't argue. "If you can't point me to him, tell me everything I need to know."

No.

No way on the Maker's green earth would he help her with that. 

Hawke had been through enough. So had his lover, his siblings, his friends. None of them deserved the kind of bullshit she intended to put them through.

"You aren't worried I'll make it up as I go?" He asked as he leaned forward.

"Not at all," she countered.

Varric smiled.

"You'll need to hear the whole story," he said as he steepled his fingers and leaned back.

Time to tell a story then. The truth this time.

Or some of it at least.

**Author's Note:**

> As with any creator, comments and kudos are always appreciated!


End file.
